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Year of the blog: Day #22 - Beginning

January 24th, 2018

Day #22


It isn’t being drowned by tidal waves, 
It isn’t being lost in the middle of the ocean, unable to swim. 
It is a hurricane. 
A ruthless, merciless hurricane bent on losing you in the midst of chaos. 
Grief doesn’t only suffocate you. 
It completely and inevitably tears you apart, limb by limb. 
Grief pulls you through hundred mile per hour winds and crashing trees. 
It’s like looking out of the window, and being unable to see anything, because today the hurricane brought tears, thousands of them; so many that you cannot see anything at all. 
Being drowned by tidal waves,
Would be suffocating and frightening. 
Being lost in an angry ocean,
Seeing and then feeling wave after wave, being unable to speak or scream or breathe. 
Even being unable to swim,
Would be preferable to a hurricane. 
Because during a hurricane you can scream, and you can feel yourself screaming, but nobody can hear you; you cannot even hear yourself. 
Grief is different than sadness. 
Sadness is darkness, tears, looking out of your window and only seeing gray. Sadness isn’t being numb. Isn’t being in a trance, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot wake up. 
And grief?
Grief is indescribable.

But through grief, we find new beginnings. New pathways, secret tunnels that have yet to be tapped. Yet to be discovered. From grief comes the opportunity to discover new life, new starts to an undetermined future. This does not mean that you have to start right from scratch. You can, as it is your life, and the journey is up to you.

From death and decay comes the promise of new birth. If one opportunity fades away, there will be others. At the time, it may feel that the only thing you've ever wanted in life is no more. But I can promise you this, if you broaden your view finder, you will find unexpected windows.

Things like this happen to me often. Whether I am pulled from sports due to health concerns, not being accepted to Disney, or even something just not going as planned, I take it all personally. I internalize everything that happens to me, as if it is a way to process what is happening to my life. I think I've talk about this in another one of my blog posts, but once I've noticed that these 'problems' gave me new opportunities (rekindling my love of theatre), it wasn't about why this was happening to me. It turned into why this was happening FOR me.

It is okay to grieve losses. Sometimes, big rifts are torn into our lives, and it shakes things right to the core. The integrity of your being can ripple. It is scary, and that is a perfectly acceptable thought to have.

Today, we begin. Either for the first time, or all over again. Only begin. That’s good enough.

- M


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